Coastal Florida turns into a ghost town ahead of Hurricane Helene

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Apalachicola, Florida, on Sept. 25, where the area had largely emptied out as people prepared for potential destruction from Helene.

Transcript

00:00But right now we're going to be joined live by AccuWeather meteorologist Tony Laubach.

00:04He was enjoying the beach yesterday.

00:05Tony, I know that we're beginning to see some changes here at Appalachia Cold of Florida.

00:11Are you noticing any kind of a water rise yet?

00:14How are the showers treating you?

00:15How's the wind and all that, Tony?

00:18Well, everything's treating me pretty good.

00:22Usually it does.

00:23Mother Nature and I have a pretty good relationship here, except for she's giving me a cold.

00:28But behind me here, this is the water, and you notice it's not really all that choppy.

00:31We're seeing a little bit of wave action here with some of the bigger gusts of wind that

00:35are coming through, but we're really not dealing with a whole lot.

00:38Again, if you've been under a rock, you're not really going to know a hurricane's coming

00:43right now, but believe me, everybody's aware because this area is like a ghost town right

00:48now.

00:49Most of these folks that were here yesterday doing final prep work, they're gone.

00:53We've just run into a handful of people here at Appalachia Cold across the water over St.

00:58George Island.

00:59Very, very few people, if any, left behind, as most of them took their belongings by this

01:04morning and they were on their way out.

01:05Mandatory evacuations took effect this morning, a lot of folks taking heed of that.

01:10Further inland, though, we'll go to Crawfordville, where we were dealing with folks really just

01:15getting themselves prepared, a lot of sandbagging going on.

01:18That has been the common theme with a lot of these residents this morning.

01:21Got up early, headed to a lot of these sandbag stations.

01:24We saw them in Tallahassee, Crawfordville, Appalachia, Cola, really just all over the

01:28place.

01:29People going, getting sandbags filled, taking them back to their residence, their properties,

01:33setting them out, and then heading on their way.

01:36We talked to many residents who were dealing with all of the logistics this morning and

01:40working on their way back to their homes and then heading on out to get out of the way

01:44of Helene.

01:45We've stayed in Tallahassee for a couple storms, but it's just more inlet than this, and there's

01:52a lot more bodies of water around here to flood, but this one seems like it's going

01:58to come right at it.

02:02West, probably Diffiniac.

02:11And we've been talking with a lot of these residents, and they have really been kind

02:14of comparing this anticipation to Hurricane Michael, some of them even referring back

02:19to Ian, which hit a couple years ago.

02:20So a lot of folks here really, really taking this one much more seriously than some of

02:26the ones that I have been on in the past before, Jeff, and that is a very, very good thing

02:29because as you've been talking about, we continue to see that forecast ramp up that number,

02:34and with that is going to be the aftermath, unfortunately, that's likely to be left behind

02:39in areas just like this.

02:40All right.

02:41Thank you for that report there, Tony, and before we jump a little farther south into

02:45the core of the storm.

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